Houston mom reunited with deceased daughter in a special way

HOUSTON (FOX 26) - A husband surprised his wife this Mother’s Day weekend by reuniting her, in a special way, with their deceased daughter.

“Look baby.  Do I look pretty?” Simone Nimmons asks her youngest daughter as she tries on her college graduation cap and gown.

Nimmons absolutely looks pretty, but not quite picture perfect. The portrait of her with her kids, on the other hand, is the perfect graduation photo for Mrs. Nimmons. It includes her 6-year-old daughter Jadalyn who died six years ago.

”I was happy, because I feel like she’s here. I feel like she’s still around,” says Mrs. Nimmons with a smile.

“She’s definitely still around for sure,” adds her husband Eric Nimmons, who surprised his wife with the graduation picture which includes Jadalyn.  “I downloaded Photoshop and just went through the tutorials and learned how to do it.” 

He did it after his wife took her graduation photos with the kids and she talked a lot about imagining their second youngest baby in the picture too.

”It’s heartbreaking to know she can’t be here physically.  So it just brought so much joy to know she’s here in some type of way,” says Mrs. Nimmons.

”It’s kind of like she’s sitting there just watching everything going on,” explains Mr. Nimmons.  

Mrs. Nimmons was a junior in college in April 2012 when her princess, who battled Sickle Cell Anemia, died after a pharmacy filled the 6-year old girls’s morphine prescription 10 times too strong. 

”And I’m steady, steady crying and that’s what was going on.  So I had to stay home. I couldn’t face the world at that time,” she says. 

The mom in mourning was too grief stricken to stay in school.  Last year she went back.  This weekend she's graduating from Texas Southern University with a degree in Social Work. 

“I’m just so proud of her,” says Mr. Nimmons.

This Mother’s Day weekend is special for the Nimmons family for a number of reasons and little Jadalyn is right here for it. 

“That picture was my mother’s day gift," Mrs. Nimmons says. "That’s the best thing he could have ever done.”